Talkhouse Podcast

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Gayby's writer­-director Jonathan Lisecki talks about the best new TV show of the summer, UnREAL, with Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, its co-­creator, writer and supervising producer. The pair discuss Shapiro's background, her inspirations, how she turned an award­-winning short film into a hit TV show in record time, getting over "the Lifetime of it all," and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

In the late '70s, Andy Gill and Jon Langford were schoolmates at the University of Leeds in England. That was where Andy co-founded a band called Gang of Four and Jon helped start a band called the Mekons. Those bands went on to great things, such as helping to invent post-punk — and becoming iconic bands in the process. The Mekons are possibly the longest-running and certainly the most beloved post-punk band. Their music has encompassed punk rock, country music and dub reggae, and they've released a long string of truly great albums like Fear and Whiskey (1985) and The Mekons Rock & Roll (1989). Their history, their music and their perseverance through thick and thin, not to mention their sense of humor, are showcased in the 2015 documentary Revenge of the Mekons. In the late '70s and early '80s, Gang of Four made some classic albums of life-changing, canonical Neo-Marxist post-punk, like Entertainment (1979), Solid Gold (1981) and Songs of the Free (1982). They've influenced everybody from Rage Against the

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Joe Swanberg becomes the first person to make a return appearance, here talking to Kris Swanberg, his wife and the writer-director of the recently released Unexpected. In a really frank and revealing conversation, they discuss the Sundance experience, selling a film, finding the right distributor, dealing with agents, taking meetings, shaping a career, and the challenges of being in a two-filmmaker household. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

You might think that Chicago rapper Vic Mensa and Samuel Herring, the frontman of Baltimore synth-pop band Future Islands, don't have much in common. But you'd be wrong. And it's not because Mensa used to rap in a rock band and Herring has been a hip-hop fan since he was a kid. And it's not because Mensa is a fan of the Beatles and Nirvana, and Herring is about to drop a hip-hop EP he recorded with Stones Throw producer Madlib. No, it's because Mensa and Herring are both musicians and they enjoy each other's work. So these guys, who had never met before, hit it off right away when they sat down at the Talkhouse Music microphones backstage at the 2015 Pitchfork Music Festival. In less than 30 minutes, they cover a whole lot of ground: their previous lives as shoplifters, music biz economics, compromising your youthful ideals, going to church, the ghettoes of Baltimore, the U.S. legal system and their mutual disappointment with the Obama presidency. And Herring even reveals the inspiration for his trademark sid

Chvrches was playing a great set at the 2015 Pitchfork Music Festival when we noticed all three members of Haim rocking out by the side of the stage. Clearly, they're big Chvrches fans. When our producer bumped into Este Haim in the VIP area, he asked if she'd like to do a podcast with Lauren Mayberry, Chvrches' lead singer (and a regular Talkhouse writer). She absolutely did. Then Danielle Haim wanted in. And then Alana Haim wanted in too. So we wound up with Lauren chatting with all three Haim sisters in a noisy trailer right there on the festival grounds. Topics covered: how to deal with getting hit in the face with a beachball in front of thousands of people, mesmerizing Afros, panic-vomiting, forgetting lyrics on stage and, most importantly, how to pronounce GIF.

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, writer­director Mary Harron sits down with Rose McGowan, the actress turned director who last year moved behind the camera for the acclaimed Sundance short, Dawn. Their wide­ranging discussion touches on everything from punk, religious cults and pyromania to Harron's experiences making American Psycho, McGowan's past as a teenage runaway and the ingrained sexism of Hollywood. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

Belle & Sebastian co-founder Stuart David is the author of the critically acclaimed In the All-Night Café: A Memoir of Belle and Sebastian's Formative Year, which came out this year, and the Pogues' longtime accordionist James Fearnley is the author of the candid, vivid and appropriately rip-roaring Here Comes Everybody: The Story of the Pogues (2012). The two author-musicians discuss the tricky matter of writing about your bandmates, the vagaries of memory and taking out the bits that make you look like a knobhead. And there might just be an anecdote or two.

If you’re a pop musician of South Asian descent, not many like you have yet reached the toppermost of the poppermost. Some really famous ones include M.I.A., Norah Jones and Tony Kanal from No Doubt. Soundgarden lead guitarist Kim Thayil, whose folks came from India, was among the first. As a kid, acclaimed new singer-songwriter Bhi Bhiman, whose family emigrated from Sri Lanka, looked to Thayil as something of a role model. Which was wise, because Thayil is one of the brightest, coolest rock musicians one could hope to meet. Now Bhiman and Thayil aren’t just mutual fans, they’re also friends. We put them together at KEXP’s studios in Seattle for a Talkhouse Music Podcast, and sure, they talked about being self-described “outsiders in rock & roll,” but they talked about a lot of other interesting things, too: their musical backstories, ruminations on the nature of pleasure and pain, the role of baseball in assimilation, their first guitars, the Chi-Lites, Nirvana’s nickname for Thayil, dealing with fans and,

In this episode of The Talkhouse Music Podcast, two great rock songwriters, Courtney Barnett and Kim Deal — of iconic alt-rockers the Breeders — get together, have a few laughs and talk about hearing the sound of your own voice, obsessing in the studio, the relationship between drugs and creativity, touring and seeing the world, what it's like to be 27, and playing guitar upside down. Don't miss Kim's imitations of English people speaking French. And she just may have come up with the title of Courtney's next album.

In this episode of the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Philip Selway (Radiohead drummer and outstanding solo artist) has a really lovely conversation with one of his favorite new musicians, Ghostpoet, who weds vivid poetry with flowing grooves. (Offstage, he's Obaro Ejimiwe, and he happens to be a big Radiohead fan.) The two had never met before, but you can hear them hit it off, as they get deep into their processes in a really candid and insightful way, and get to places that only two musicians can get. Selway has some really great reminiscences about the dawning days of Radiohead, and Ejimiwe has some really great reminiscences about the dawning days of Ghostpoet, and they talk about music theory vs. intuition, collaboration, self-doubt, the dangers and benefits of reading your own press, and much more. Although they make very different kinds of music, by the end, Selway declares, "We've got similarly wired brains."

In this episode of the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Philip Selway (Radiohead drummer and outstanding solo artist) has a really lovely conversation with one of his favorite new musicians, Ghostpoet, who weds vivid poetry with flowing grooves. (Offstage, he's Obaro Ejimiwe, and he happens to be a big Radiohead fan.) The two had never met before, but you can hear them hit it off, as they get deep into their processes in a really candid and insightful way, and get to places that only two musicians can get. Selway has some really great reminiscences about the dawning days of Radiohead, and Ejimiwe has some really great reminiscences about the dawning days of Ghostpoet, and they talk about music theory vs. intuition, collaboration, self-doubt, the dangers and benefits of reading your own press, and much more. Although they make very different kinds of music, by the end, Selway declares, "We've got similarly wired brains."

Erika Wennerstrom sings and plays guitar and keyboards with the great Heartless Bastards, whose new album Restless Ones came out June 15th. Her band has threads of garage rock, blues and country — and the music of the great Texan singer-songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard shares some of those same sounds. Wennerstrom and Hubbard are also fans of each other’s music, so we put them together for a Talkhouse Music Podcast and they dug deep into their songwriting process and had some laughs… and maybe a cry too.

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Matthew E. White and Delta Spirit lead singer Matt Vasquez had never met before they recorded this Talkhouse Music Podcast, but they just fell right into a great conversation, and they covered a whole lot of ground: their path into a career in music, the new music industry, the future of music, why they are musicians, and why and how they do what they do, and who is the greatest American rock & roll band.

In the second part of their conversation for the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Janet Weiss discusses her talent crush on Nick Cave and Meredith Graves talks about making music as a solo artist.

In this edition of the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney and Meredith Graves, formerly of Perfect Pussy, talk about creating safe spaces for women to feel empowered, crashing with your fans, and fist fights.

Big-time Gang of Four fan Annie Clark (St. Vincent) talks with the band’s guitarist Andy Gill about distortion pedals, soccer tricks and the Grateful Dead.

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, husband-and-wife filmmaking team (and regular Talkhouse Film contributors) Lawrence Michael Levine and Sophia Takal discuss with Hollywood screenwriter Larry Karaszewski their Brooklyn-set screwball comedy Wild Canaries, plus the art of writing dialogue, acting in your own movies, mysteries, the movies of Milos Forman and Blake Edwards, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Daniel Schechter, the writer/director of Life of Crime and also a Talkhouse Film regular, is in conversation with actor/writer/director Desiree Akhavan about her debut feature Appropriate Behavior, plus women in film, bad actors, "director jail," finding your voice, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, legendary actresses Isabelle Huppert and Kim Cattrall -- who first met on the set of Otto Preminger's 1975 suspense drama Rosebud -- look back on their friendship and discuss such topics as achieving longevity in their careers, Sex and the City, Cattrall's new TV series Sensitive Skin, and the joys of producing. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, two Academy Award-winning filmmakers are in conversation as Errol Morris talks with James Marsh about his new Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, plus Morris' own Hawking film, A Brief History of Time, Frederick Wiseman, cinematic misanthropy, Ed Gein, beating Donald Rumsfeld with a brick, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.